Building the Rails in the Rockies brick by brick

Posted:
02/22/2012 04:01:39 PM MST

A giant mechanical bug crawls on a steeple in the Lego display at the train show on Saturday. The annual event draws visitors to see all kinds of displays, but this year, the Legos garnered most of the attention.

Construction workers head back to work after their coffee break. The longer a fan sat and looked at the Lego display, the more entertaining details were revealed.

Estes Park enjoyed the annual Rails in the Rockies model train show this weekend. Enthusiasts and vendors filled the Estes Park Conference Center on Saturday and Sunday to see these tiny, yet lifelike displays. Oddly, the display attracting the most attention was the least lifelike.

The Colorado and Wyoming Lego User Group, or CoWLUG, constructed a whimsical display from the famous colorful plastic blocks. Pirates, ninjas, construction workers and mimes filled in the display between the tracks of several different trains. Last year, the group's bug train captured imaginations. This year, visitors were wandering around the large display trying to see all of the amusing details, puns and jokes.

Farms of many varieties flank one side of the Lego display. Cows, ostriches, corn and wind farms seem to be plagued by prehistoric monsters.

"No two displays are alike," said self-professed Lego Nut Duane Hess of Broomfield. "We have a sense of humor, though it might not be a good one."

The display had several different sub-displays, from a surreal rural scene of corn, cows, wind turbines and a dinosaur eating the ostrich farm, to a mining operation, invading barbarians, a black-and-white mime town, an urban cityscape, complete with protesting creatures and a harbor, all of them containing great little surprises.